Lamennais, Hugues-Felicité Robert de (1782-1854)

Lamennais, Hugues-Felicité Robert de (1782-1854), the leading Catholic thinker of
Restoration France. He was the first proponent of liberal Catholicism and an early
advocate of social Catholicism. His eventual advocacy of a conciliation between
Catholicism and liberalism led to a rupture with the church. Lamennais, the son
of a prosperous merchant, was born in June, 1782 at Saint-Malo in Brittany. A
moody and lonely person, he followed his brother into the priesthood in 1816.
Lamennais sought in religion a remedy for the anarchy and tyranny unleashed by
revolution. He believed that social chaos and religion were both rooted in the
primacy of individual reason and that the church led by the papacy could restore
unity and order to society. Early in the 1820s he broke with the Restoration
monarchy and devoted himself to the promotion of the independence of the church.
For Lamennais the promotion of general freedom became a practical necessity.
With the liberty to propagate its message, Lamennais believed that the church
would be victorious. By 1827, Lamennais' outlook on revolution had changed. Although
still concerned about anarchy, he now viewed positively the revolution's fundamental
intention. He began to advocate a new social order based upon an alliance between
the church and revolution. Lamennais enthusiastically welcomed the July revolution
in France, but rapidly sensed its inadequacy and became a convinced republican and
democrat. He subsequently applauded the revolutions in Belgium, where his ideas
had gained popularity and where an alliance between Catholics and liberals had been
effected, and in Poland.

On October 16, 1830, with Henri-Baptiste Lacordaire, Comte Charles de
Montalembert, and others, he launched the newspaper, L'Avenir, to
promote religion and liberty. During the thirteen months of L'Avenir
existence, Lamennais' social theories became more radical. He called for Catholics
to lead the movement for political democracy and economic justice. Lamennais regarded
the opposition to L'Avenir from within the Church as part of the
opposition of the powerful to the people. The papacy was pressured by the French
hierarchy, the French government, and Austria to condemn the paper. Pope Gregory
XVI, though thoroughly reactionary, would have preferred not to make an official
issue of the matter, but his hand was forced by Lamennais, who suspended the paper
and demanded a verdict from the pope on his doctrinal orthodoxy. Lamennais, however,
who no longer believed that the pope was competent in political questions
, refused to alter his positions after the pope in his encyclopical of 1832
Mirari vos condemned the ideas advocated in L'Avenir.

It was very difficult for Lamennais to break formally with the church.
At the end of 1833, while ill, he had signed a submission to papal authority,
but he quickly repented this concession to tyranny as a betrayal of his beloved
people. Although he wrote Paroles d'un Croyant in 1833, he did
not publish it until April, 1834. Lamennais did not advocate revolution, but
the book was a revolutionary call for the end of the domination of humans by
other humans. Lamennais ignored an explicit condemnation by the pope, and by
1836 completely renounced catholicism.

Lamennais continued to write until his death in 1854, but after his
break with the church, he had little impact. He advocated a new socially
democratic community, rooted in a purified Christianity. In 1841, he was
jailed for a year for his vociferous attack on the policies of the July Monarchy
in a pamphlet, Le pays et la gouvernement. He emerged from prison
unmoved. He likewise refused the plea of some liberal Catholics to rejoin the
church after the election of the supposedly liberal Pope Pius IX.

The revolution of 1848 provided Lamennais with his last public role.
His new newspaper, Le Peuple constituant, was published from February
27 to July 11. He received 104,811 votes in the April election, and won the thirty-fourth
and last seat allocated to Paris in the constituent assembly. In the assembly,
Lamennais chose to sit on the extreme left. Because of his reputation, he was
chosen to participate on the committee charged with drawing up the new constitution.
Lamennais advocated universal suffrage, universal free education, and a graduated tax.
He advocated an end to the monopoly of the university and the separation of church
and state. He opposed a strongly centralized government, and called for local
liberties. Lamennais was disappointed by the revolution. He was a poor speaker
and had little impact in the constitutional committee, resigning from it after two
meetings. Though he never advocated violence, he sympathized with the plight of
the poor and bitterly opposed the brutal repression of their rising in June. He
denounced Eugène Cavaignac's press law, which required a twenty four
thousand franc security deposit from newspapers that made the continuation of
Le Peuple constituant impossible. Its last issue, printed on
July 11, carried Lamennais' denunciation surrounded in black:
"Le Peuple constituant began with the republic, now, with it,
it comes to an end . . . It is necessary today to have money, much money, to
enjoy the right to speak . . . Silence to the poor!" Legal action was taken
against Lamennais, and in October the paper was condemned and he was fined.
Lamennais joined representatives of the left to support the presidential candidacy
of Alexandre-Auguste Ledru-Rollin, and wrote forty-three articles for the
democ-soc La Réforme in 1849, before the paper ceased
publication on January 12, 1850. The declining and isolated Lamennais
condemned the coup of Louis Napoleon. He died in Paris on February 27, 1854.
On his deathbed he refused to see a priest, but his remains were escorted by
a large crowd of poor people when, as he had requested, he was buried in an unmarked common grave.